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The Slovenia-based Bitstamp announced the breach on its website Monday and shut down services temporarily Tuesday in order to investigate the hack. The theft totaled about 19,000 Bitcoin, but hackers were only able to access a small portion of the exchange’s total assets. While some Bitcoins are stored online, many more are kept on local hard drives in what Bitcoin users call “cold storage.”

Our first analysis found that the core issues with this incident like other bitcoin related incidents are as follows

The lack of security on the server / host computer OS where these wallets are stored. These Operating Systems needs to be configured with as much security as the usability aspects are handled, meaning, in security, usability and security are inversely proportional.

The API and application that is written for users to interact with their bitcoins are a second flaw. There are many loop holes that has been discovered, especially with third party wallets, third party APIs etc. We have investigated incidents similar to this at a very smaller scale caused by application errors.

The insider issue: there are hacks that occurs where an insider of the company enables such an incident to take place. Either it is a intentional hack or that a user’s computer is hacked by a virus/trojan/malware that in turn used the data from the intranet of the company.

The implementation of the exchange itself. It is a possibility, but bitstamp is an established organization and has a great team, so I will leave this point at here. So that I cover all the areas related to the possibility.

The Cosmic HQ research labs team extends any kind of support and consulting to any individuals in the digital currency industry for cyber security related incident analysis. We have been doing such investigations almost every quarter, at least once, including forgot passphrase, hack issues, mis placed keys etc.

The security incidents in the digital currency incident is less compared to real world security incidents, but because digital currencies are IT oriented, they seem to get more attention.

Let us all work together to make digital currencies a success!

The financial markets generally are unpredictable. So that one has to have different scenarios… The idea that you can actually predict what’s going to happen contradicts my way of looking at the market. – George Soros

It is not a good start for bitcoin this year, so, I though I should let you all know how to improve your mining infrastructure efficiency so that you might earn the extra penny from it.

There are only 3 things that you can change/improve to make the mining more efficient

Power Consumption – To manage power efficiency you will have to manage the hash rate, clock frequency of each of your chips in the miner(s) and tweak them to perfection, because the factory settings that is provided is not effective, they are not completely tested. I have tested spondoolies, innosilicon and KnC miners and all of them could be optimized to work more efficient than what their factory settings were giving.

Hash Rate – The hash rate can be improved by a bit of over clocking and removing the stupid beagle bone or Rpi or any ARM based device in the process. I use and always recommend miners to move to a host based mining, you will definitely get a better hash rate, guaranteed. I have seen 20 to 35% improvement in hash rate as the RAM in these ARM based devices are too small and the processor is too weak to manage everything else and then handle comm with the pool.

Cooling – the ventilation and the rate of transfer of heat from the heat sinks are the 2 mechanisms to have efficient miner. but you need to understand the more you spend on cooling, the more the power cost. I have been working on free cooling and high CFM cooling within contained spaces, and I have got very good temperature variation on the chip as well as the device. The concept of hot and cold aisle inside a DC is not a real scenario for digital currency mining, just because that is not how these devices work! they are designed as a costly heater 😛

If you have questions that you specific to your infra, do message me, I am more than glad to help you optimize your infrastructure.

After Ubuntu is installed and ready, click on the ubuntu icon on the side bar or press windows key on your keyboard type additional drivers and open the application. You will have 4 to 5 choices depending on your nvidia graphics card

Either select the one which has recommended

Or choose the one which says tested

Apply the changes and wait for it to install. Once it is installed press Ctrl + Alt + F6 to go to command line mode. This is because during the installation of the nvidia driver inside the cuda toolkit, Xserver (the service that enables graphical user interface has to be turned off)

Run the installer (the parameter override compiler will negate any compiler version issues) ./cuda_6.0.37_linux_64.run -override compiler

Give yes for all questions, and when asked for the path where the cuda toolkit and cuda toolkit samples, press enter so that it takes the default location, it will be easier to debug.

You might be asked to re run the setup after restart as the installer will try and remove the other drivers. Once restarted come back to the CLI using Ctrl + Alt + F6 and nagivate to downloads folder (without quote) – “cd /home/yourusername/Downloads/”. After that escalate privilege to root using “sudo su ” command, enter your password if asked.

Run the command (without quotes) – ” cd “

Edit .bashrc file with the command (without quotes) – nano .bashrc

Add the following to the end of the document – “PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/cuda-6.0/bin”, o the next line (press enter) ” LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/usr/local/cuda-6.0/lib64:/lib “

Press Ctrl + Y to close press enter to save. You will be back at the terminal. Run the command (without quotes) : “source .bashrc”

You are not very good at dealing with emotion. You live your life in your head, free from emotions and you can be downright insensitive, not on purpose but you don’t fully understand emotions so you avoid them. This could run into trouble in a dating relationship if you pick a sensitive boyfriend/girlfriend. You are best with another person who is as spunky as you and who is not possessive or too emotional.

Gemini sign needs novelty

Most of your thirst for life is lead by your curiosity. You want to know what makes people tick and you want to experience new things. You get bored easily and need constant stimulation, this could either be a good thing or a bad thing. If your job requires repetitious work, you easily get distracted and lose interest. If your job requires you to be on the move gathering information, for example a journalist or researcher even a daycare worker, you are happy and preform very well.

Gemini sign is indecisive

Gemini is the sign of duality, you have two personalities inside you that are sometimes in conflict and sometimes harmonious. This is why you are so indecisive, it is hard for you to make a decision because you feel that you want both. You flip your feelings on a dime, you might be happy one second and depressed the next.

Your adaptability brings you good fortune, if you see that a certain project has no chance of success, you are able to create change and form something new. You embrace change and a challenge and you will eventually get what you want. Gemini sometimes seem to be intuitive, but this is just your practical mind looking at things the way they really are and formulating a plan that is sure to succeed by weighing the advantages and disadvantages ob your mental scale. Of course, the Gemini curse of indecisiveness will lurk over your head and even though you know what you need to do, you hesitate and re-question if this is really right. You have to learn to rely on your intuition and deep inside, you know what s right.

I have been away from blogging for almost three years now, after long time i have decided with the help of my friend that i will get back on blogging. A lot of things in life have changed; i am changed from a two handed human being to one handed human being. I managed to topple Scorpio onto its side, i was in hospital for eternity, i could not travel abroad because of health issues, i have stopped working on my passion. I have gone back to programming, i m too bored with life, i started cooking again and many more things in life have changed…

The prelude for everything that changes in life there is some good awaiting you, said a lot of successful and experienced people, why do they say that? i have been down in the lows for a long time and still they are just adding to the misery ,not only i am mentally handicap i guess now i am physically too. Here i share with you few of my knowledge based of my experiences, life is never about the long time picture, it is always about being optimistic about tomorrow and not living in yesterday. My dad used to tell when i was lazy to do my homework and when i tried to keep them for tomorrow so that i can have fun with my friends today

” Yesterday is dead and gone, tomorrow is yet to come, today is yours, so do it now“.

1. The Hindu mythology of karma everything that goes around, comes around says the book of Mahabharata to guide the generation to righteous path, what does this mean? Does that truck passed by the road will pass in front of you again; does it have anything to do with Gandhi ji’s two slap rule? What does it really mean? May be i did break some one hand before that my hand got broken but the book did not say that the exact same will come back to you. May be i have hurt a lot of people and this is the way universe get back to me. May be i was a murderer in my last birth. Anyway i used to think about it in my long stay in the hospital.

2.The days after 20th September 2009: That unfortunate day , the 20th September 2009 at around 12’O clock in the afternoon i managed to add one more impossible thing in my life’s list of impossible things, i toppled a car full of people and managed to hurt none other than myself. I had a long haul, being at the hospital, meeting a lot of doctors, getting a lot of operations and eventually i am left with one left nerve. Oh damn!! i lost a nerve i don’t know what is the side effect of losing that nerve but everything which is important which requires a nerve is hopefully working, i think my body just discarded the one useless nerve.

Conclusion: When everything has happened, this year a very eventful one, but it feels like nothing has happened.

I am the same old me( few years older ha ha ha) with little lower typing capability, getting back to the habit of blogging in the last few hours of the fastest year of my life.